Villarreal was scheduled to start for Triple-A Toledo on Thursday, having made the transition to the Mud Hens rotation as soon as the Tigers optioned him out earlier this season. He is 0-5 with a 4.41 ERA for Toledo, but he has better learned about using his changeup, as he said a few weeks ago.

Unless the Tigers have an injury, Schlereth can’t come back to the big leagues for at least 10 days. The question now is whether the Tigers might use the opening to bring back Brad Thomas when he’s ready, or maybe shift Phil Coke back to the bullpen. Leyland said Wednesday the Tigers have pondered some possibilities with Coke, but they haven’t made any decision.

not sure what the answer is, but wow, rough outings the last few days. Amazing how many runs we have given up. Not pinning the blame on the easy guy, but geez Raburn, dive for that ball if you can’t glove it, that would have saved one run. But of course we needed much,much more than 1 more run last night.
Too bad we gave up so much when we hit so much too. Ugly to watch, I flipped back and forth and did catch Kelly – maybe he should be in our bullpen. He was doing his best to keep a straight face, glad he took it all in stride.

glad JV has broad shoulders, he needs yet another good outing to right the ship and give the pen a break.

Well can it be worse than what happened the last couple of days. Regardlesss we need 1 less left. As Rich said last night it isn’t often you hit 3 homers and get killed in a game. I swear if JV gets hit around this afternoon, they truly know what’s coming.
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Sure was interesting and pitiful to have to see Kelly pitch.
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Gk

Happy to see Schlereth moved down. He needs to fix his issues. AJ Sager, the pitching coach at Toledo, is good at helping these guys do just that. I actually wish the Tigers would promote him to the bigs. I think he’d help this staff much more than Knapp has.

So, what’s Bondo doing these days? Seriously. I’m thinking he’s probably better than some of the guys in the ‘pen now.

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